I - J.A. In my
Library of America edition of the book, pg. 53, the title to Goodman's biography
reads The Tragedy of Sebastian Knight, with the article out front; JM: ...on page 4..."Tragedy of Sebastian
Knight."
JM: On the other hand ( or cuff?) in
vthe New Directions ed, we find "Tragedy.."with no araticle in the first
chapter, b ut "The Tragedy" ( twice) in the seventh chapter. And the same
occurs in The Library of America (Boyd's 1941-1951), on page 47 we get "The
Tragedy"...
Indeed, a proliferating oversight. Perhaps...
Something equally intriguing occurred with
Mallarmé, in one of his translations intended to "abolish randomness from
writing."
Instead of George W.Cox's original euripidean
"If the gods do ougth unseemly, then they are not gods at all", in
Mallarmé this came out as "Si les dieux ne font riend
d'incovenant, c'est alors qu'ils ne son plus dieux du tout" ( If the god
don't do ought unseemly, then. In French a "ne" was
added!)
II -
J.Aisenberg: [if there are articles that compare "V" and
Charles Kinbote]: Michael Wood in his discussion of the TRLSK, "Lost
Souls", in The Magician's doubts,...points out that this line: '... the
very sound of the word "sex" with its hissing vulgarity and the "ks, ks" catcall
at the end, seems so inane...") --has a certain similarity to the hysterical
hypocritical prissy tone of some of Kinbote's writing. ... There definitely
does seem to be an odd echo between V. and Kinbote, except that V. is a mild
mannered and completely ethical person set adrift by mourning for a lost loved
one and Kinbote a freak without much in the way of scruples, though both of
them try to appropriate their subjects in a strange internal way for personal
purposes that are hard to grasp... Seems meant to suggest something cosmic
while simultaneously funning illusionism ...
JM: You observed that V. is
a "completely ethical person set adrift by mourning for a lost loved
one". Is he, indeed? In
TRLSK V. writes: "Beware of the most honest broker.
Remember that what you are told is really threefold: shaped by
the teller, reshaped by the listener, concealed from both by the dead man of the
tale. Who is speaking of Sebastian Knight? repeats that voice in my conscience.
Who indeed? ..." We
can also read another sentence of his: the
meek little man waiting for a train who helped three miserable
travellers in three different ways? " In
Pale Fire Nabokov warns the reader about "fairy-tales" ( CK's notes about
the haunted barn): "There are always "three
nights" in fairy tales, and in this sad fairy tale there was a third
one too."
What
can we make out about the sentences above and this
one,below?
"He is said to have been three times to see the
same film — a perfectly insipid one called The Enchanted Garden. A couple
of months after his death, and a few days after I had learnt who Madame
Lecerf really was..."
There are moments when VN writes a definite "three" ( although not
necessarily indicating "three nights"). Would this
precise "three" indicate some kind of trite,
tritheist trinity fairy-tale revelation? And did "V" in fact learn who
Mme Lecerf "really" was?
BTW: I fully agree with your suggestion: "suggest something
cosmic while simultaneously funning
illusionism"...